Miles and Miles of Texas

Darla and I have been in Texas for awhile. We were in Rockport near Port Aransas for a month. Now we are in Galveston for a month. Texas is wonderful. It is HUGE — there are deserts and forests and grasslands and of course beaches.

We are at Jamaica Beach RV Resort. Really a great park, a lot to do in the park — 2 dog parks! But, as always, the best part for Darla and me is how nice the people are. We are kind of beloved. People are always stopping to see us…. bringing us treats. One extremely wonderful lady comes all the way across the park everyday just to give us treats!

Today Darla found a huge jelly fish on the beach. We have seen so many varieties of jelly fish. We had never seen a jelly quite like this one — turns out it is pretty common — a cannonball or cabbage head jelly.

These are a favorite food of leatherback sea turtles. Sometimes they are rimmed in brown.

Last year we saw hundreds of Portuguese Man of Wars. Galveston beacjh was littered with them. We have seen a couple this year.

The Portuguese man o’ war, (Physalia physalis) is often called a jellyfish, but is actually a species of siphonophore, a group of animals that are closely related to jellyfish. A siphonophore is unusual in that it is comprised of a colony of specialized, genetically identical individuals called zooids — clones — with various forms and functions, all working together as one. Each of the four specialized parts of a man o’ war is responsible for a specific task, such as floating, capturing prey, feeding, and reproduction. Found mostly in tropical and subtropical seas, men o’ war are propelled by winds and ocean currents alone, and sometimes float in legions of 1,000 or more!

I don’t know why so many died off last year. They were all over the beach.

I think the only other kind of jellyfish we have seen are moon jellies. We have seen a lot of them.

Darla borrowed this picture from the internet — it shows the moon jelly in action as it were.

This is the only sponge we have ever seen on the beach. Darla thinks it is a red boring sponge. I don’t know my sponges. We went into a sponge store n Appalachacola — that was pretty fun. There are so many types of sponges. We did not see any red sponges — so we thought we should not touch this one. Scientists think some sponges live for 100 years!

We finally saw a star fish on the beach.

There are 2000 types of starfish. Only they are not fish, they are echinoderms. Sea urchins and sand dollars are echinoderms. Darla named the starfish Patrick. She is not very original. Named the sponge Bob. Scientists call them sea stars because they are not fish. This is a banded sea star.